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DEFENCE 



WILLIAM PENN, 



FROM THE 



CHARGES CONTAINED IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



Et. Hon. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 



^ 



BY HENRY FAIRBAIRN. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

PRINTED BY JOSEPH RAKESTRAW, APPLE-TREE ALLEY, 

FIRST DOOR ABOVE FOURTH ST. 

1849. 




A DEFENCE OF 

WILLIAM PENN. 



In the news papers which have been received recently from 
England, there is an account of a deputation from ihe Society of 
Friends in London, to the Right Honorable Thomas Babington 
Macaulay, the author of the new History of England, on the 
subject of the charges which appear in that publication, against 
the moral and political reputation of William Penn. 

The same news papers describe the argument between this 
deputation and Mr. Macaulay, as remaining still in favour of the 
author of the History of England — whose statements are there- 
fore to be taken as incapable of being now overthrown by any 
evidence which remains in vindication of the fair fame of Penn. 

All this may be only a news paper paragraph, with little 
foundation in the truth that any such a deputation may have 
waited upon the author of the new political novel, called a His- 
tory of England ; or that the result of the argument was con- 
firmatory of the charges which Mr. Macaulay has brought 
against the founder of the Colony of Pennsylvania: — for these 
charges rest upon no other than a sandy foundation, and they 
can be shaken with great ease. 

The principal charges now brought against William Penn, 
would appear to be resolvable into the general one — that 
his fanatical devotion to the advancement of the interests of 
Quakerism, rendered him indifferent to the means by which the 
end could be gained ; that he was therefore Jesuitical in his 
principles, and a willing political instrument in the hands of those 
two tyrannical princes — Charles and James, — in whose reigns 



he did act an undoubtedly distinguished part in the English po- 
Htical world. 

But when the proper light may be thrown upon the scenes in 
which William Penn is here described as moving so honour- 
ably at the courts of Charles II., and of James the II., it will be 
found that every part of his character has been falsified by 
the author of the new History of England. And although 
two centuries have intervened to increase the difficulty of 
tracing out the bearings of charges so contrary to all that has 
been supposed to be established in favor of a great name for the 
founder of the Colony of Pennsylvania ; — yet all these imputa- 
tions can be shown to be without any foundation whatever in 
historical truth — to be the grossest of libels upon the great and 
good name of William Penn — for misrepresentation, exaggera- 
tion, distortion, suppression of circumstances, false statements, 
false inferrences, and language beneath the dignity of the pages 
of history — form the compound of these charges, now brought 
against the Socrates of modern times. They are the charges of 
sophistry alone, and Macaulay is the modern Melitus of a Wil- 
liam Penn. 

The introduction of Penn upon the scene of this History of 
England, takes place at the execution of Alderman Cornish ; 
and therefore, in the latter part of the reign of James II.; 
for the execution of Cornish was one of the judicial murders of 
the time of the infamous Judge Jeffreys, and arose out of the 
discovery, or the pretended discovery, of the Rye House Plot. 
" William Penn, who stood near the gallows," says the histori- 
an, " and whose prejudices were all in favour of the government, 
said that he could see in the demeanor of Cornish, nothing but 
the natural indignation of a man, who was unjustly slain under 
forms of law." 

Here is the first, but the cardinal, and all-important misre- 
presentation of the political character and opinions of William 
Penn. He is represented as a sycophant to the government, 
which was then advancing with rapid strides to the establishment 
of arbitrary power in England; — as siding with the court in 



these infamous executions of the best and the most enlightened 
patriots of the time — and as bearing an unwilling testimony to 
the iieroic demeanour of Cornish, in the scene of his most infa- 
mously unjust death. These assertions are in direct violation 
of all historical truth. 

The Rye House Plot, had furnished the pretence which the 
court had long been in search of, for the i-emoval and destruc- 
tion of the leaders of the liberal party in England, of whom 
Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney, had been the most 
powerful in abilities, as in reputation and in rank in life. 

After the executions of Russell and Sidney, another important 
life was required to be sworn away, for the purpose of terrify- 
ing the city, or the mercantile part of the metropolis of Eng- 
land, into the same submission to the establishment of arbitrary 
power, which the trunkless heads of Sidney and Russell would 
produce at the court end of the town; and Cornish, who had been 
an Alderman of London, and was a merchant of wealth and 
abilities, but a strong opponent of the arbitrary measures of 
the government of Charles II., for this purpose was selected 
to be murdered, on a similar pretended participation in the Rye- 
House Plot. His name is with those of Russell and Sidney, 
in the History of England, and when Mr. Macaulay gives the 
words " unjustly slain under forms of law," he quotes the un- 
doubted opinion of William Penn respecting this very barbarous 
murder of one of the best, and most enlightened, and valuable 
citizens of London, at that time. But it is most false to assert 
that he beheld this murder with prejudices in favor of the royal 
murderer, by whose judges these scenes were then being 
brought about, with a frequency so great, that the reign of 
Charles II. now ranks in historical infamy, with the reign of 
that of Tiberius, of whose similar murderous proscriptions so 
appalling a picture has been drawn by Tacitus, in his 
Annals of the Empire of Rome. William Penn did not witness 
the execution of Cornish with prejudices in favour of the govern- 
ment, but with prejudices in the most violent opposition to the 
government, his sympathies were with the murdered man, and 
not with the murderers concerned in this most truly diabolical 



P 6 

scene. It can be shown, that the whole heart and soul of Penn 
were on the side of Cornish, and with the liberal party in po- 
litics, of whom Cornish was now one of the leaders in the act 
of destruction, and in direct co-operation with which leaders 
of the party in opposition to the government of Charles II., 
himself was this same William Penn. 

His connexion with the liberal party, and his very intimate 
connexion with its principal leader, Algernon Sidney, has been 
rendered clear by the correspondence in the hand-writing of 
William Penn, which remains in the library of the castle of 
Penshurst, in the County of Kent; this being the seat of the fam- 
ily of Sidney at the present time. These letters of William Penn, 
are of a very energetic political tendency, they are all written in 
the most direct opposition to the measures of the government of 
Charles II., and are addressed to one, to whom Penn could speak 
freely in those dangerous political times. Some of these letters 
come down to a time almost immediately before the fall of this 
great opponent of the government of Charles II., and therefore, 
to the time of the execution of Cornish, when William Penn is 
described in this History of England, as thinking and as acting 
in favour of the government and in opposition to his own poli- 
tical friends and party in the state. 

The most remarkable of these letters, as published by the 
Rev. Mr. Blencow, in one of his works on the House of Sidney, 
is that written by William Penn immediately before the time of 
the election for the borough of Guilford, at which place Algernon 
Sidney was about to stand for its representative in Parliament; 
but against the opposition of the whole influence of the govern- 
ment of Charles II., for the eloquence, the learning, and the 
known incorruptibility of Algernon Sidney, were not more the 
causes of his defeat on every occasion of his attempting to 
find his way into the House of Commons, than of his judicial 
murder, which followed very soon after the time of the latest 
of these letters from William Penn. The letter on the subject 
of the Guilford election, leaves no doubt whatever, of the truly 
patriotic sentiments of William Penn ; for we see his despond- 
ency at the sight of the fast approaching slavery of his country, 



by means of the Parliamentary corruption which the court had 
extended over the greater part of the kingdom at that time. 
He urges Sidney to exertion at the borough of Guilford, al- 
though almost despairing of success, and observes, " if it can 
be done, thou hast the eloquence to persuade, and the energy to 
undertake," with other expressions, which prove the entire 
soul of William Penn to have been with Algernon Sidney, and 
with the party in direct opposition to the government, which 
now was murdering its leaders on the pretended participation 
in the scheme of assassination of the King, which has been 
called the Rye House Plot. 

When we reflect that Algernon Sidney had just fallen mur- 
dered by the court, whose aims and policy they both so vehem- 
ently opposed, that murder was then following upon murder, 
and that Cornish was another of the same republican party 
with whom Penn was in direct alliance and co-operation, the 
which are shown in the Penshurst correspondence — how can it 
be possible that he witnessed the execution of Cornish with pre- 
jucices in favour of the destroyers of his own political party 
in the state ? And when we find, from the Memoirs of Sir John 
Dalrymple, that William Penn was seen openly and anxiously 
canvassing the electors of the borough of Guilford, in favour of 
Algernon Sidney, speaking from the hustings in his favour on the 
same memorable occasion, and acting with all zeal with this most 
formidable enemy of the King, the monarchy, and the arbitrary 
power which was in the course of establishment in the reign of 
this infamous prince ; who will believe the inference of Macau- 
lay, that William Penn possessed no political independence of 
character, — but was a sycophant, who would side with any 
crime which royalty might commit upon the lives and the liber- 
ties of all beyond the pale of his own particular sect of the 
Society of Friends. Yet in this slavish and disgraceful man- 
ner is he first introduced upon the scene of this History of 
England ; as witnessing the noblest exhibition of firmness in the 
hour of the martyrdom of the virtuous Cornish, and as viewing 
these infamous outrages upon the liberties of his country with 



8 

prejudices in favour of a Jeffreys, a Charles, and a James, the 
most infamous of mankind. 

And it is clear that Mr. Macaulay well knew of the exist- 
ence of the correspondence between Algernon Sidney and 
William Penn ; for the publication of the Rev. Mr. Blencow, is 
mentioned by him in a note, at page 261 of the History of Eng- 
land, as the "interesting Memoirs of Col. Henry Sidney." — 
This was the older brother of Algernon Sidney, and the Col. 
Sidney mentioned by William Penn, in the letter to the Earl of 
Sunderland, which is dated at Philadelphia, in 1683, and pub- 
lished in the second volume of the Transactions of the Histori- 
cal Society of Pennsylvania ; — a letter which is replete with 
interesting descriptions of the country from which it is written, 
and in which, observes William Penn, " I had hoped to have 
seen your Lordship on some evening, at the house of Col. Henry 
Sidney, &c." Moreover, the publication of the letters from 
William Penn to Algernon Sidney, have been amongst the 
most prominent of the recently discovered MSS. relating to the 
times of the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II., the 
Penshurst correspondence being usually considered as a most 
solid testimony to the enlightened and independent political 
opinions of WiUiam Penn. 

He is seen from this correspondence to have been struggling 
for the preservation of the liberties of his country, and not with 
those who were religionists exclusively in their political move- 
ments against the measures of the government of Charles II.; 
but who were the defenders of liberty in the broadest republican 
meaning of the word. 

A martyr in this same republican cause was Cornish, of the 
city of London ; the entire metropolis was horrified at the infa- 
mous trial and the barbarous execution of this virtuous, enlight- 
ened and honourable opponent of the attempts of the govern- 
ment to establish a system of civil and religious slavery in 
England ; and William Penn adds only the expression of his 
own indignation at the scene of this execution, when he pro- 
claims Cornish to have died *' with the natural indignation of a 
man unjustly slain under forms of law." 



9 

But here follows the enquiry, why such a man remained 
about the court. Might not Mr. Macaulay have reasonably 
'nferred that a courtier must be in favour of the measures of 
the court ; and was it not hypocrisy in Penn to have been on 
terms of intimacy with Charles II., when he was moving 
against his government in the energetic manner which is proved 
by his own handwriting, as now remaining at Penshurst? Here 
the circumstances are to be taken into view. 

Respecting his presence, at all, at the court of England, it 
must be remembered, that William Penn had been born in a 
high rank in life ; that he was the son of a distinguished naval 
commander, and possessor of the estate of Stoke Pogis, in Berk- 
shire, with the Elizabethan mansion, which is seen to this day 
from the Great Western Railway, about four miles from Windsor 
Castle, the country residence of the Queen. Besides the pos- 
session of a very considerable fortune, he possessed the advan- 
tages of a fine person and courtly manners, and a very wide 
range of accomplishments in literature and learning; and was 
at the time of these events, in the important position of the Gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania, from which colony William Penn had 
recently returned, at the time of the discovery of the Rye House 
Plot. The court was therefore a place which was regularly 
in the way of a person in the private and the political station 
in life then occupied by William Penn ; and whilst he does not 
appear to have sought, so he does not seem to have avoided, 
the company and the favours of the King. 

When sent for by the court, he seems to have obeyed the 
summons to attend; but he was not the mere courtier and sy- 
cophant, which is the general character intended to be given to 
William Penn, by the writer of this new History of England ; 
for he never sacrificed a real principle in all his intercourse with 
the courts of Charles and of James. Neither is it true that all 
are courtiers who are sometimes seen about a court ; nor that 
all truth, independence, and sincerity of purpose, must be left 
behind at the gates of the palaces of Kings. As Plato was a 
visitor to the court of Dionysius, councilling mild measures to 

2 



10 

the terrified tyrant of Sicily, and showing how his own self- 
preservation would be better obtained by the conciliation, than by 
the destruction, of the enemies of his government, so did the 
modern Philosopher of Quakerism urge mild measures of 
government upon the two Kings of England, Charles and James; 
nor would the English Dionysius, James II. have died in a 
despicable obscurity in a foreign nation, if he had listened 
to the councils of Penn, in the midst of the closing spenes 
of his vindictive and most arbitrary reign. Even the usual 
titles of royalty would appear to have not been given to 
these princes by William Penn, who called them only by 
the familiar names of "Charles" and of "James;" whilst 
the independence with which he was accustomed to ex- 
press his opinions to royalty, may be seen in the account ot one 
of these interviews with Charles II., when his opposition to the 
royal will was carried to so great a height, that the King was 
almost on the point of ejecting him from the royal closet, and 
said, that "six such men would be sufficient to set my kingdom 
in a blaze." 

That William Penn remained about the court, whose policy 
he opposed, is in no manner derogatory to his good name, for 
he was not guilty of the hypocricy of professing opinions which 
he did not entertain. And though he could not alter the whole 
monarchical system of government, he yet could alleviate the 
sufferings of those who were oppressed in the cause of the 
civil and religious liberties of his native land. He is shown to 
have done infinite good by his personal influence with Charles 
and with James — to have opened, by the Act of Indulgence, 
the doors of the jails to thousands of Quakers and of Catholics; 
to have mitigated the amounts of ruinous fines imposed upon 
the unsuccessful party of the Duke of Monmouth, and to have 
ever been moving in the business of charity, in those dark po- 
litical times. Although familiar with princes, William Penn was 
a republican of the noblest classical mould. 

With these views of the general position of William Penn at 
the court of England, let us now examine the rest of the mis- 



11 

representations of Mr. Macaulay, m his account of the affair 
of the young ladies of Devonshire, who had been convicted of 
treason, in the presentation of a banner to the Duke of Mon- 
mouth, when in rebelHon against King James. 

This affair is represented by the historian, as one in which 
Wilham Penn was employed as a broker by the ladies of the 
court, who had obtained the power to liberate these convicted fe- 
males, but were about to proceed to outlawry, unless upon the 
payment of the sum of £7000; "They requested Penn to act 
for them," observes Mr. Macaulay, " and Penn accepted the 
commission, yet it should seem that a little of the pertinaceous 
scrupulosity, which he had so often shown about not taking off 
his hat would not have been altogether out of place on this 
occasion. He probably silenced the remonstrances of his own 
conscience, by repeating to himself, that none of the money 
which he extracted would go into his own pocket — that if he 
refused to be the agent of the ladies — they would find agents 
less humane; that by complying he should increase his influence 
at court, and that his influence at court had already enabled 
him, and might still enable him, to render great service to his 
oppressed brethren. The ladies, at last, were forced to content 
themselves with a third part of the money which they had ori- 
ginally demanded." 

These are very heavy charges against the reputation of Wil- 
liam Penn; for no Jesuit could have gone by a round of greater 
criminality for the purpose of promoting the interests of his own 
particular order in religion ; whilst the words " money which 
he extracted" are those which describe some villain whom the 
ladies of the court had employed for purposes the most merci- 
less and the most vile. 

Let us enquire into the truth of these important imputations, 
and how it came to pass that William Penn should have been 
concerned at all, in the compounding of the treason of the 
females who were then in imprisonment in Devonshire. 

We have already seen the direct connexion of Penn with the 
leaders of the popular party, in the reign of Charles II.; and 



12 

now the death of Charles had taken place, and the rebellion of 
the Duke of Monmouth had been another movement of the 
liberal party in England, against the still more rapidly ad- 
vancing establishment of arbitrary power, in the person of King 
James. The Duke of Monmouth was now the only remaining 
leader of the popular cause — he had been long in the midst of 
all the movements of the liberal party, and had been accused of 
a participation in the Rye House Plot of the preceding reign, 
and would have fallen with Sidney, Russell, Cornish and others 
at that time, but that he was the acknowledged illegitimate son 
of the King. He had been banished the kingdom at the time 
of the Rye House Plot — he had returned at the head of an in- 
surrection against the government of King James — he had 
been unsuccessful in this rebellion, and had been himself be- 
headed, and all his followers had been scattered to the winds. 

But the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth possessed the good 
wishes of all the liberal part of the community, and particu- 
larly of the Quakers, and of other religious sectarians, who 
were suffering in the jails of the kingdom, under the govern- 
ment of the bigotted King James. One eminent Quaker writer, 
who was in the prison of Ilchester, at the time of the passing 
of the rebel army through the western counties, describes the 
visit of the Duke of Monmouth to the religious prisoners, and 
says " he was a handsome man and kindly spoken, and we re- 
gretted his fall, the news of which arrived some weeks after- 
wards." This was the universal feeling of the nation on the 
failure of the enterprise which had been expected to overthrow 
the government of the tyrant, who was proceeding to the en- 
slavement of the country by more direct and unhesitating mea- 
sures, than were those of the more indolent and more cunning 
and cowardly King Charles — nor would the success of the Duke 
of Monmouth have been hailed as less glorious an event, than 
was the subsequent successful enterprise of the Prince of Orange, 
with the glorious revolution of the year 1688. All who had 
participated in the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth were 
the objects of popular sympathy, the Duke himself had been 



13 

the idol of the people, and his execution had been lamented and 
execrated, as had been those of Russell, Sidney, Cornish and 
the other martyrs in the cause of the liberties of England ; nor 
was it any other than a continuation of his efforts to aid this 
cause by every unwearied exertion, and at every possible oppor- 
tunity, which could have procured the interference of William 
Penn in the negotiation for the pardon of the young ladies in 
the prisons of Devonshire, and for the relief and consolation of 
their parents, relations and connexions, who were all, with him- 
self, embarked in the general liberal cause. 

For amongst those who fell under the vengeance of the vic- 
torious party on the failure of the Monmouth rebellion, were 
these young ladies, of whom Mr. Macaulay has given an 
account so unfavourable to the reputation of William Penn. 
They had been arrested in Devonshire on a charge of misprision 
of treason, and being tried, had been convicted of the presen- 
tation of the banner to the Duke of Monmouth, in the market 
place of the town of Taunton, at the time of the passing of the rebel 
army through that place. The consequences of this conviction 
were, that these females were then under orders of transporta- 
tion to the colonies, and that all the property possessed by any 
of them, or which might have descended on entail, or in any 
other manner, or at any future time, had become forfeited to 
the Crown. In this position of the young ladies, a pardon under 
the broad seal would appear to have fallen into the hands of 
certain of the ladies about the person of the Queen, and the ne- 
gotiation of the terms of the pardon would appear to have been 
recommended by the Earl of Sunderland, to the attention of 
William Penn. 

First then — it is to be borne in mind, that these young ladies 
had been guilty of a very imprudent action in having formed 
any such a procession, for the ceremonious presentation of the 
banner to the Duke of Monmouth ; and though the paintings 
which Sir Peter Lely has handed down to us of this remarkably 
handsome courtier, may render it probable, that these young 
ladies had only been engaged in the ceremony from motives of 



14 

frivolity, yet it must not be forgotten, that much importance 
was attached to the movement, by reason of the connexion of 
all of these ladies with families of rank in the West of England, 
and that the effect of the ceremony had been to increase the 
excitement of the rebellion amongst the rural population, as 
showing that the gentry were favourable to the cause of the 
Duke. 

In this conviction of the females, the royal pardon was offered 
for the sum of £7000; and yet one-third part only of this 
money was obtained by William Penn for the ladies of the 
court. " Agents less humane," undoubtedly would have been 
found in times when every demonish villany was in the ascend- 
ant in England ; and the last acre of land would too probably 
have been extorted from the families of these ladies, who now 
were in the power of the law ; since personal ruin must be 
preferred to the transportation of their daughters as convicts and 
slaves. 

The inference of Mr. Macaulay that William Penn was endea- 
vouring to keep up his influence at court, by means of this nego- 
tiation, cannot have any foundation in the truth, when it is seen 
that he disappointed the expectations of the ladies by not less 
than two-thirds of the sum which they had demanded for the 
pardons ; nor is there the shadow of a reason for such a supposi- 
tion as that William Penn had any such purposes in view, in 
procuring the liberation of females in danger of destruction, 
from a participation in the same liberal cause to which he was 
himself devoted, and the promotion of which was at that time 
the principal business of his life. 

The pardons of the Devonshire ladies, were a part of one 
hundred, which had been obtained by the Queen of James II., 
for the purpose of procuring money by their sale. This was a 
degrading mode of raising money for the expences of a court ; 
but it shows us the true position of Mary of Modena, as " de- 
serted and insulted for such a rival as Catherine Sedley," which 
are the words of Mr. Macaulay, and on the supreme ascendency 
of which mistress of James II., he has filled five columns of this 



15 

History of England, with an almost indecently too circumstan- 
tial an account. The Queen is shown clearly to have 
possessed no influence with her profligate husband and aged 
debauchee, but to have lived in the indignant and retiring manner 
of an injured gentlewoman. And when writing for these 
pardons, by way of procuring money for the expences of 
her state and condition, it is to be assumed that the pay- 
ment of the salaries of the waiting women about her person, 
was the purpose for which the pardons had been distributed 
amongst these " ladies of the court." And if the Queen herself 
possessed no influence of a political description, the unpaid serv- 
ing women of such a mistress could assuredly have possessed 
none, and consequently the females, with whom William Penn 
is described as ingratiating himself for the purpose of procuring 
future patronage for himself and " his oppressed brethren," had 
no more true power to assist the cause of the Quakers, than 
had so many strangers in the street. 

But whilst the position of the Queen and her servants is thus 
seen to have been that of imperative contempt and isolation, 
that of William Penn, on the other hand, was one of the great- 
est prominence and power, at this particular period of the reign 
of James. He is described by Macaulay, and the description 
agrees with that of many other writers, as possessing more in- 
fluence with the King than almost any other person in the 
kingdom ; he was daily called into the royal closet, whilst whole 
crowds of noblemen and gentlemen were left behind in the wait- 
ing rooms; his house at Kensington presented a levee of crowds 
of suitors for favours through his influence, and William Penn 
was in the zenith of his power at the time of the occurrence 
of the afiair of the young ladies in Devonshire, and the Maids 
of Honour to the Queen. 

It was about this time that the similar affair of the estates of 
Sir Patrick Hume and other patriots of Scotland, was under- 
taken by William Penn. The Duke of Gordon had ob- 
tained a grant of the forfeited estates of these gentlemen in 
Scotland, but subject to the payment of certain annuities to the 



16 

female branches of the families, in the manner which was usu- 
al in grants of confiscated estates. These allowances could 
not be obtained by the families of the refugees — and Sir Patrick 
Hume having become known to William Penn, whilst upon a 
journey in France, would appear to have represented to him 
the condition of his family and friends as melancholy in the 
extreme, by reason of the refusal of these payments by the 
Duke of Gordon, and to have solicited the interference of 
William Penn. Penn applied accordingly to the Duke of 
Gordon, with the observation, that it would be better to pay 
these unfortunate people the few hundreds which are their due, 
or otherwise " I will make it as many thousands out of thy way 
with the King." The arrears were immediately paid. 

When he could deal thus with one of the most powerful noble- 
men in Scotland, it is not very probable that William Penn 
would submit to the base occupation of an agent in extortion, 
for the benefit of the patronage to be obtained from these ob- 
scure waiting women about the person of the Queen. 

The circumstance of the interference of the Earl of Sunder- 
land, in the affair of these ladies, is also in favour of an honour- 
able construction of the purpose for which this Minister could 
have written the letter, which is the authority of Mr. Macaulay 
for his statement of the case. The Earl of Sunderland had 
been the intimate and the steadfast friend of William Penn 
through a long course of years ; and notwithstanding the 
abusive character which Macaulay has drawn of this eminent 
nobleman, yet when he is judged by his actions, it is not possi- 
ble to discover any thing beyond the most generous exercise of 
his power, throughout the career of this distinguished Minister 
of these two English Kings. The only objection to the charac- 
ter of Sunderland, is the ordinary one, that he was too fond of 
power to retire into the shades of private life when the mea- 
sures of the government were contrary to his principles ; but 
otherwise, he certainly must be acknowledged to have remained 
in power for purposes of the most honourable kind. All the 



17 

royal proclamations for liberty of conscience bear the signature 
of the Earl of Sunderland; not the more important general Acts 
of Indulgence only, but the State Papers contain a long suc- 
cession of orders under his signature for the relief of individual 
Quakers in comparatively humble circumstances, men who had 
been imprisoned by the Mayors and the Magistrates of pro- 
vincial towns. That such persons should have found attention 
from the Earl of Sunderland, who was Lord President of the 
Council at this period, is in favour of the probability that he 
was now interfering in favour of these Devonshire ladies from 
motives of benevolence alone ; and that he had referred the 
affair on some petition to the king from the families of the pri- 
soners, to the investigation and the arbitration of William 
Penn. 

But in the narrative of Macaulay, a circumstance is intro- 
duced in aggravation against William Penn in this composition 
oFthe treason of the Devonshire females, that the negociation 
had been refused by Sir Francis W^arre, the Tory Member for 
Bridgewater; and thence the inference is drawn that William 
Penn would unscrupulously be employed in transactions' which 
Sir Francis Warre was too honourable to undertake as the 
agent of the ladies of the Court. 

There is not in the United States the opportunity of tracing 
out these illustriously obscure personages in the byepaths of 
the history of England, and we cannot therefore ascertain the 
true character of Sir Francis Warre ; but there is no difficulty 
in perceiving that the Tory Member for Bridgewater was the 
direct enemy of the fathers and the families of the females in pri- 
son for the presentation of the banner to the Duke of Mon- 
mouth. They were all of the Whig, or liberal, party in politics, 
and the member from Bridgewater would think that their estates 
were very justly visited with the heaviest of fines for the crime 
of having allowed their children to appear in what he would 
view as the foul and unholy rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth 
against the Lord's annointed in the person of King James. 
The negociation was one having reference only to the amount 
of the fines to be paid in composition of the treason, the con- 
viction having not reached to the lives of the females of Devon- 
3 



18 

shire; and that Sir Francis Warre had refused to interfere for 
the reduction of the extortion attempted by the Court ladies, 
is the only meaning of a passage in which magnanimity is as 
falsely attributed to him, as meanness and criminality of pur- 
pose, with an equal degree of calumnious misrepresentation, are 
charged against the character of William Penn. 

We see, then, that the sum of .£7000 had been originally 
demanded for the pardons, and that this sum was reduced by 
two-thirds, or by the large amount of ^64333, and that this 
reduction took place whilst the affair was in the hands of Wil- 
liam Penn ; we therefore conclude that as Mr. Macaulay says 
that the court ladies were " compelled" to be satisfied with 
only two-thirds of the money which had been demanded, that 
the compulsion was exercised by Penn, and these court ladies 
were intimidated, as the Duke of Gordon had been in the pre- 
vious case of Sir Patrick Hume, by the apprehension of the 
representations of William Penn and his known great influence 
with the king. 

The true result of this affair of the ladies of Devonshire would 
therefore appear to be, that William Penn did not interfere in 
favour of the ladies of the court, but in favour of the impri- 
soned females and of their families and friends in the political 
world ; that he did not extract money, according to the disgrace- 
ful imputation of this History of England, but that he prevented 
its extraction by a very considerable amount ; that he had no 
motives in view for the advancement of his own religious So- 
ciety in interfering in such a negociation, for that the court 
ladies were not only possessed of no political influence whatever, 
but William Penn never did advance his purposes by any such 
circuitous rounds as the secret agency of women, for he was in 
continual personal intercourse with the king; and that the true 
view of this affair of the Devonshire ladies must consequently be, 
that they and all their families and connexions were under no 
other than eternal obligations to the man who had brought them 
out of a position so dangerous as that in which they had become 
involved by their own imprudence in interfering in the cause 
of the Duke of Monmouth, and thus hazarding the dangers 
•which always accompany the losing side in war. 



19 

Let us now turn to the next charge which Macaulay produces 
against William Penn, one less filled with Jesuitical criminality 
undoubtedly, but still more degrading, and insuhing, and equally 
false and unfounded, as that which has gone before. 

In the account of the execution of Elizabeth Gaunt, which 
was another of the inhuman tragedies of those times, the histo- 
rian says, " William Penn, /or ichom those scenes appear to have 
presented an attraction, vhlch huma7ie men usually avoidy 
who hurried from Cheapside, where he had seen Cornish 
hanged, to Tyburn, in order to see Elizabeth Gaunt burned. 
He afterwards said that when she arranged the straw around 
her person, so that the flames should the sooner terminate her 
sufferings, all the spectators burst into tears." 

This unhappy female was burned at the stake for no greater 
crime than that of giving refuge to one of the persons accused of 
a connexion with the Rye House Plot, and the presence of Wil- 
liam Penn at the execution, will be found to have been con- 
nected with the same political purposes as was his attendance 
at the execution of Cornish ; but in no manner for the dis- 
graceful purpose of witnessing from curiosity alone, this most 
inhuman scene. 

As it was the purpose of the court to strike terror through 
the nation by these barbarous executions, so it was the custom 
of the liberal party to attend in numbers and in respectability, 
for the contrary purpose of sympathizing with the victims of 
arbitrary power, and to show that they were not to be viewed 
as criminals, but as martyrs, in the liberal cause. Such exe- 
cutions we know to have been thus attended by the flocks of 
the dissenting clergy, and by the members of the political party of 
the very numerous patriots who fell under the tyranny of these 
two most infamous reigns of Charles and of James. Very 
affecting accounts remain respecting the execution of Twing, 
when so surrounded by his companions in religion ; whilst the 
executions of the regicides, of Lord W^illiam Russel, of Alger- 
non Sidney, of Sir Henry Vane, and of Alderman Cornish — all 
have been described as conveying to the court the deepest 
mortification, by reason of the respectful sympathy and the pro- 



20 

found silence and sorrow of the crowds in attendance at the 
scenes. 

Political executions never have been viewed as the same 
disgraceful exhibitions with those which are attended by the 
crowds of prostitutes and pickpockets of the metropolis of 
England ; nor have mobs been observed in any country, to be 
deficient in perceiving the wide difference between the unjust 
execution of patriotic citizens, and the just punishment of the 
murderers and burglars of ordinary crime. Nor could a man in 
the garb and in the known high position, of William Penn, 
have attended at ordinary executions with safety from the 
insults and the violence of the mob ; whilst, contrarywise, his 
presence would be respectfully noticed by the people at such 
executions as those of Alderman Cornish and of Elizabeth 
Gaunt. It was favouring the popular cause in a well under- 
stood mode of silent sympathy with the victims in the cause 
of popular liberty ; and it was an equally well understood 
silent condemnation of the measures of the Court. The very 
words in which Macaulay makes William Penn describe the 
executions of Cornish and of Gaunt, shew that he had been 
present in the hope that scenes of firmness in death would be 
exhibited by these victims of arbitrary power ; that in so far the 
repetition of these enormities would be prevented by the disap- 
pointment of the tyrants that the effect of intimidation had not 
been produced upon the people ; but on the other hand, that 
an exhibition had taken place of general popular sympathy with 
the martyrs murdered by the Court, and " unjustly slain under 
forms of law." The hurried passing of William Penn from 
Cheapside to Tyburn, was the eagerness of a good citizen 
to be present at a post of duty, though undoubtedly a most 
harrowing duty, to a man who so abhorred all bloodshed in either 
the forms of war, or of the unjust criminal laws which filled the Sta- 
tute Book of England at that time ; and whose entire existence is 
an answer to the gross assertion of Macauley that he could wit- 
ness with pleasure the scene of the execution of females in the 
most melancholy position of Elizabeth Gaunt. He attended at 
her execution, as at the funeral of an innocent female who was 
falling, however indirectly, in the general cause of civil and 



21 

religious liberty, arid towards so humble an individual as Eli- 
beth Gaunt, undoubtedly his presence was for the performance 
of the works of mercy which were the never ceasing occupa- 
tion of William Penn ; for the comfort of the afflicted sur- 
viving relatives and friends, by sympathy, by council and by 
money, and to see the tragedy to its termination in the decent 
burial of the dead. Thus did Socrates in the time of the reign 
of the Thirty -Tyrants of Athens, and thus did the transmigra- 
tion of Socrates in the reign of terror in England, which his 
calumniator now would represent as a time of pleasure to be 
found in the spectacle of the burning of an aged and an inno- 
cent female such as the unfortunate Elizabeth Gaunt; the most 
horrid judicial murder which has been known in modern 
times. 

Having thus noticed the more gross and disgraceful of these 
charges against the good name of William Penn, let us now 
turn to the scene in which he is next introduced by this historian 
as moving in the affair of the Presidency of Magdalen College, 
Oxford, in which he was the messenger and agent of the 
king. 

Here every characteristic of practised villainy is attributed 
to the most open-minded and the least deceitful of mankind. 
He is called by Macaulay "the tool of the King and the Jesuits ;" 
he is made to threaten and to cajole, by turns, the President 
and Fellows of Magdalen College; wading through any agency, 
how infamous soever it may be, so that he shall please the 
tyrant by whom he is employed ; and even assisting in the 
overthrow of that religious liberty, which it had been hitherto 
the struggle of his entire existence to defend from the arbitrary 
power of kings. 

The connexion of William Penn with this affair of the Presi- 
dency of Magdalen College, Oxford, was slight and transient ; 
for he seems to have been selected by James as having been 
accidentally in that part of England at the time ; nor is it pro- 
bable that he might have thought himself justified in refusing to 
bear any message or to render any other service which was 
not against his conscience, when directly commanded by the 
king. 



22 

And there was nothing against his conscience in the first part 
of his message and commission, nor until the principle involved 
in the oath of office had been brought before his mind, in the 
course of the interview with the authorities of the college, of 
which Macaulay has given so calumnious an account. It is 
clear that William Penn had no conscientious preference of 
Protestants over Catholics, for the possession of the revenues 
of the University of Oxford ; for he stated in the course of the 
interview, that " It no longer is to be, that sons of members of 
the Church of England alone shall have a learned education ;" 
neither did he consider the interest of religion and learning in 
any manner involved in the particular individuals who were 
struggling for the good things of a place so celebrated as the 
University of Oxford has been through all ages for its sumptu- 
ous feastings, its sloth, "fat slumbers of the Church." There 
is an air almost of jocularity about the observations of "William 
Penn on the fine buildings, with the beautiful walks and the 
rich revenues of the Colleges of Oxford ; whilst the reply of the 
President of Magdalen College is entirely in a worldly strain : 
" The Catholics have ' robbed' us of Christ Church, and now 
the ' battle' is for Magdalen. They soon will have the rest." 

The truth quite evidently is that William Penn from early 
education in a University from which he had been expelled for 
exposing its corruptions — from long subsequent knowledge of 
the hireling character of all connected with the government of 
the place — from the recent instance of gross subserviency and 
of prostrate political baseness, by which the philosopher Locke 
had been expelled from the same University without charge 
and without trial, but only for the crime of entertaining the 
noblest principles of religious toleration and of the civil liberties 
of mankind, and he having been the intimate personal friend of 
William Penn, as of all the other great minds in advance of that 
very barbarous age — and considering that darkness and corrup- 
tion could not reign more completely under any other religious 
denomination than under the then governors of the University 
of Oxford, he might have been indifferent to the success of the 
Catholic over the Protestant combatants for the rich revenues of 
the colleges, and might have proposed the division of the spoils 



23 

of learning in the manner of which Macaulay has given so cir- 
cumstantial an account. As it has come down to these more 
enlightened times, the University of Oxford is a mere monas- 
tery of the dark ages still remaining in England — its surplices, 
Puseyism, and tractarianism are all so many remains of Catholic 
ceremonial and Catholic superstition; whilst in the Duke of 
Wellington, who is the present Chancellor of the University of 
Oxford, a most illiterate soldier is seen in possession of all the 
enormous patronage of an institution wdiich is ages behind the 
religion and the learning of the time. When the inauguration 
speech of the Duke of Wellington was placed in his hands, 
this military Chancellor proved to be unable to read the Latin 
language, in which the speech was compelled to be delivered 
according to the ancient rules of the University ; and its deli- 
yery was gone through amidst the roars of laughter of all the 
spectators of a scene of which there remains an engraving, from 
which posterity will see how the brightest honours of learning 
•were won in the time of that Queen Victoria whose reign Mr. 
Macaulay has written this History of England to show to have 
been the commencement of the millenium upon earth. Such 
being the condition of the University of Oxford in these times 
of comparative reforms of ancient abuse, it must have been 
still more Augean in the times of William Penn ; and by letting 
in the stream of competition and of the energy and labour of 
the rival religion to that of the Church of England, he had un- 
doubtedly in view the removal of the accumulations of ages of 
abuse of the rich revenues of the place. It is the proposal now 
very generally made for the regeneration of the University of 
Oxford ; nor will the next important movement in the reform of 
the government of England, pass without the admission of the 
dissenters of the country to a share of the revenue which is 
wasted upon generation after generation of an aristocracy edu- 
cated in every prejudice in favour of the barbarisms of a 
feudal antiquity, and who become the unyielding legislators 
who curse England by a system of refusal to give way in time 
to the changes required by the altered condition of the world. 

But whatever might have been the intended proposals of 
William Penn for the future government of the University of 



24 

Oxford, it is certain that his agency had been so far inconse- 
quential in the affair of the Presidency of Magdalen College, 
until the principle involved in the oath of office had been men- 
tioned in the course of the memorable interview with the autho- 
rities of the University ; when equally certain it is that he aban- 
doned his mission forthwith and turned instantly round against 
the king. It had then become apparent that James was breaking 
not only through all the laws of thS nation and of the University, 
but through all the obligations of an oath; and William Penn at 
once displayed the incorruptible uprightness of his character in 
a noble letter to the king, in which he stated, that " such 
mandates are a force upon the conscience and not very agreeable 
to your other gracious indulgencies. By the general Liberty of 
Conscience, none can he deprived of their proferty who do what 
they ought to do, and this the Master and Fellows of Magdalen 
College appear to have done.^^ With this letter, he seems to 
have gone on his way in the business of the pastoral visit which 
had taken him into that part of England ; thus having haz- 
arded everything with the king, who was in the height of exas- 
peration at the time of these events. The authorities for this 
letter are Sykes, Sewell and Creech ; and its suppression is the 
more difficult to be attributed to ignorance of its existence, as 
every source of information is seen to have been known to the 
writer of this History of England ; and this letter has been 
always amongst the most prominent and most honourable of all 
the events in the political career of William Penn. 

Connected with the affair of Magdalen College, there are 
two other charges brought against William Penn ; that he did 
not scruple to be " a broker in simony of a particularly disrepu- 
table kind, to tempt a bishop to commit perjury;" and that "he 
had bought land subject to tithes, on which the purchase money- 
had been allowed to him." 

The crime of simony consists in the sale of church prefer- 
ment for lucre and gain ; but William Penn was not proposing 
to sell the bishopric of Oxford, nor in any other manner to gain 
money by the proposed changes in the arrangements of the church. 
He was only the messenger of the king, and withdrew from 
his coramission when the moral iniquity of the measures of the 



25 

government had been brought clearly into view. He was fol- 
lowed to Windsor by Dr. Hough and a deputation of five of the 
fellows of Magdalen College — his continued good offices were 
rendered to the cause of the college to the last, and until the 
commission had been issued by the king; and on the authority 
of Hough himself, all this is well known to have been the con- 
duct of William Penn. Simony is therefore a futile charge. 

That he "bought land on which the value of the tithes had 
been allowed to him," may seem to American readers of this 
History of England to have reference to some dispute in con- 
nexion with the tithes of the patrimonial estate of William Penn. 
But there is no foundation for such a supposition ; for William 
Penn did not at any time purchase land in England, where his 
patrimonial estate was in a state of continual sale and diminution, 
by reason of the losses on the colony of Pennsylvania and of his 
entire neglect of that lucre and gain of which he here is as 
erroneously accused as of simony and of fraudulent refusal to pay 
tithes. His estate at Stoke Pogis was at no time the subject of 
dispute with reference to tithes : the property at Worminghurst 
he obtained with his first wife ; and the various residences at 
Rickmanworth, Kensington, Barn Elms, and other places in 
the vicinity of London, would all appear to have been rented 
only, by the family of William Penn. But though he bought no 
land at any time subject to tithes, yet the moral obligation to pay 
tithes on land which he might have purchased was not greater 
than to pay tithes on the lands derived from his ancestors, to 
whom the purchase money had equally been allowed ; and this 
is likewise a vague and futile charge. 

Those who are conversant with the tithe system of England, 
will perceive that it is only the general argument of the 
modern political economy of tithes, brought forward against 
William Penn as one of the Society of Friends, — the case 
being supposititious with regard to the purchase of land. It is 
reasoned by the tithe owners, that all persons are dishonest who 
refuse to pay the tenth part of their agricultural productions to 
the established Church of England : since tithes have existed 
from time immemorial, the owners of land have bought their 
estates for one-tenth part less money than though the claims of 
4 



26 

the church had not existed at the time of the purchase and sale 
of such estate ; thence, that the church possesses a perpetual mort- 
gage on the produce of the soil of England ; that all who refuse to 
pay the interest of this mortgage, in the form of tithes, are guilty 
of fraud upon the just rights of the established church of Eng- 
land ; and William Penn, who was a Quaker, was also guilty of 
a crime in refusing to pay tithes. Divested of the obscurity of 
the terms in which Macaulay has brought forward this charge, it 
is merely included in the general accusation which falls upon 
Quakers and upon all other persons — of whom there are many 
legions in number — who will not pay tithes to a church in which 
they do not believe, but who answer the political economists 
that the mortgage of the Church of England is void from the 
beginning ; for that tithes are collected by an unscriptural and 
an unjust law. 

It is a deceptive and sophisticated application of the general 
principle to the particular circumstances of the individual, and it 
is quite assuredly false in the circumstance which is stated respect- 
ing the purchase of land which was subject to tithes, for no land 
would appear to have been purchased at any time in England 
by William Penn. 

Such is the falsehood of these charges of sycophancy, of 
Jesuitism, of simony and of fraud upon the Church of England, 
as arising out of the affair of Magdalen College, and the employ- 
ment of William Penn as a messenger and agent of the king. 

But the newspaper paragraph describes Mr. Macauley as prov- 
ing to the deputation of Quakers that William Penn is con- 
demned in the records of their own Society ; for that he was 
expelled " for courtier-like compliances," although he was after- 
wards admitted again into the Society of Friends. 

The writer of these observations has not the opportunity of 
knowing the arrangements of the Society of Friends, but it is 
clear that though it were true that he had been expelled from 
the Society, this would not be of any very material importance 
in an historical view of the character of William Penn. What 
the Quakers of that time considered to be courtier-like compli- 
ances, may have been only the most consummate prudence, in 
the midst of so many religious and political enemies as those 



27 

who must have surrounded such a person as Wllliani Penn 
at the courts of Charles and of James ; neither might his 
Quaker contemporaries, who were principally farmers scat- 
tered throughout the kingdom, have been the best of all 
possible judges of the manners and the management which 
were requisite in a William Penn. But though he had been 
expelled from the Society of Friends — and even this is said to 
have no foundation in the truth — he was expelled only on a 
point of manners, and not of morals ; and his re-admission as 
mentioned in the newspaper paragraph, implies an explanation 
which removed the courtier-like compliances from the minds 
of his brethren of the Society of Friends. However he may 
have been yielding in the slighter points of manners and eti- 
quette — and it has been thought that continual intercourse with 
the court did gradually unbend the original rigidity of his 
address towards people of high rank — yet has the suaviter in 
modo, fortiter in re, been ever held to be the mark and 
distinction of the perfect human being ; nor would a true prin- 
ciple appear to have been ever yielded amidst all the tempta- 
tions and dangers of the lengthened intercourse of William Penn 
with those historically infamous two English kings. The letter 
to James on the subject of the Presidency of Magdalen College, 
replies for ever to all such charges as that of sycophancy ; for 
William Penn very nobly shines out from amongst the crowds of 
flatterers and villains who were siding with the king in this ini- 
quitous and dangerous proceeding, and which so largely contri- 
buted to his loss of the throne of England, an event which took 
place almost immediately after that time. 

These are the principal charges which appear in this History 
of England, but there is a general summary of the character of 
William Penn ; and in this he is described as deficient in know- 
ledge of the characters of men ; his remaining literary works 
are undervalued by Mr. Macaulay, and though William Penn 
might have been a man of good intentions, he was always " the 
dupe of persons less honest than himself." 

These would be only misfortunes, and not crimes of character, 
■were it even apparent on what part of his career the charge of 
folly can be shown to have been visible in the character of 



28 

William Penn. That which appeared to be folly, proved to be 
wisdom the most profound, in the man who ventured into the 
wildernesses of America, armed only with kettles and with bales 
of cloth ; and the day is believed to be not far distant when 
the glory of that conquest will be more fully acknowledged by 
mankind. Soldiers are by many persons believed to be des- 
tined to figure for a short time only longer as the most promi- 
nent characters on the theatre of the world ; nor will it be in 
the pages of philosophy alone, in the Spirit of Laws, and by 
great Montesquieu, but by the world at large, that an immortal 
fame will be awarded to the only true conqueror of the Western 
world. 

Neither could his penetration of individual character have 
been so deficient as Macaulay represents, for the correspond- 
ence with Algernon Sidney, which has been brought out of its 
burial place at Penshurst, shows William Penn to have been in 
advance of many very eminent judges of men in his estimate 
of the character and accomplishments of Algernon Sidney ; — 
in advance of Burnett, of Evelyn, of Ludlow, of Barillion, of 
Dalrymple, of Hume, of the poet Thomson, and of whole hosts 
of others who have concurred in the same estimate of the charac- 
ter and accomplishments of this high minded and most truly illus- 
trious and extraordinary man : neither do we find him in connexion 
with any who have not descended in honour historically to the 
present times. Deceived, Penn certainly was not, in the charac- 
ters of his political associates, for he never deceived any, and 
this was the principal reason of his success with so many states- 
men and princes with whom he was connected in the course of 
a long political life. 

Respecting the literary merits of William Penn, it might 
have been good to have deferred to the opinions of Mr. Macaulay 
on a subject so immediately within his province as a Reviewer, 
were there not throughout this History of England so determined 
a series of falsifications of every good attribute of the charac- 
ter of William Penn. Apart, then, from his religious writings, 
there is no estimate too high for the merits of the greater and 
the later, productions of William Penn ; nor is there in all the 
classical learning which has been incorporated into the litera- 



29 

ture of England, any nobler assemblage of the great sayings 
and the great thoughts from the farthest fountains of the learn-' 
ing of Greece and Rome, than appear in the Maxims and Re- 
flections of William Penn and in the second part of his No Cross 
No Crown. This renders the more to be regretted the present 
contempt which is thrown over all that concerns William Penn 
in a publication which will be so far diffused as will this History 
of England, and through which, the public already too generally 
ignorant of the existence of these accumulations of practical wis- 
dom, now will be still more indifferent to the works of a man 
who has left in his later literary productions, such treasures of 
untold gold. 

Nor can the projector of the city of Philadelphia be denied 
a high place amongst the solid benefactors of mankind. Famous 
as had been the many cities of antiquity, none had been com- 
menced on a comprehensive and mathematical system of build- 
ing ; and when we see so many rising cities on this continent, 
St. Louis, Cincinnati, and others in imitation of the model city 
of Philadelphia, it must be allowed that these are so many monu- 
ments to the genius, the mathematical learning, and the solid 
utility of the changes which were founded by William Penn. 

We have thus gone through the false charges of all kinds 
wTiich this History of England offers against the reputation of 
William Penn, and it seems only to remain that a clue should 
be found to the motives for which these imputations should 
have been made upon a name which has been hitherto so high 
amongst the founders of systems for the future benefit of man- 
kind. 

The work which Mr. Macaulay has now written is not a His- 
tory of England in anything but the name. It has been under- 
taken for a particular purpose and at a particular time ; it is writ- 
ten in a rapid and a very brilliant style, and was ushered into 
the world amidst the sounding of all the trumpets in the British 
dominions, in advance of the coming and the conquering Mars 
of the English throne. The book has been written since the 
establishment of the present republic of France. 

The conqueror has hastily buckled on his armour — the thunder 
of war is heard in the political world, and says Mr. Macaulay, 



30 

" All around us the world is convulsed with the agonies of 
great nations ; governments which lately seemed likely to stand 
for ages, have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. The 
proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed with civil 
blood. All evil passions — the thirst of gain, and the thirst of 
vengeance — the antipathy of class to class — of race to race, 
have broken loose from the control of divine and human laws. 
Fear and severity have clouded the faces and depressed the 
hearts of millions. Trade has been suspended and industry 
paralized. The rich have become poor and the poor have be- 
come poorer. Doctrines hostile to all science, to all arts, to all 
industry, to all domestic charities — doctrines which, if carried 
into effect, would in thirty years undo all that thirty centuries 
have done for mankind, and would make the fairest provinces 
of France and Germany as savage as Congo or Patagonia — have 
been avowed from the tribune and defended by the sword. 
Europe has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, 
compared with whom, the barbarians who marched under Attila 
and Alboin, were enlightened and humane." 

This magniloquent exhibition of political raving, means merely 
that the French nation have overthrown the government of a 
tyrant and an impostor, and have founded a republic within 
only twenty-one miles from the coast of Kent. 

" The truest friends of the people," he further says, "have 
with deep sorrow owned that interests more precious than any 
political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be neces- 
sary to sacrifice even liberty, in order to save civilization." 

The interests which were, and which still are, in jeopardy, are 
such interests as the interest of the Marquis of Lansdowne, in 
a landed estate of .£120,000 a year, obtained in a late reign on 
a job lease under the crown. The Marquis of Lansdowne is 
the patron of Mr. Macaulay, and can re-open the road to the seat 
in Parliament and the place under the government of England, 
which he had recently and suddenly lost when the revolution 
took place in France. 

The sacrifice of liberty which he proposes in order to save 
civilization, means that reformation in the church, the uni- 
versities, the chancery, the army, the navy, the revenue and 



31 

the colonies of England shall be resisted, to whatever nunnbers 
the standing array may be increased, or if the Habeas Corpus 
Act be suspended, and all other tyrannical measures be resorted 
to by the party who were in power at the time of this second 
revolution in France. 

Mr. Macaulay is in the same position with Edmund Burke, on 
the breaking out of the first revolution of France. His circum- 
stances are unhappily similar, the times are similar, and the 
work of Burke on the first revolution, and the concludinsT 
observations of the present volume of the History of England, 
are in a similar style of magniloquent rhodomontade. Thrones 
are falling, altars are profaned, universities are plundered, murder 
is abroad in the land, and all is war and sudden death. Republi- 
canism does all these crimes, and republicanism must be con- 
quered in England, on its first appearance in the land. As 
Macaulay possesses the most brilliant pen in the nation, on 
him devolves the mighty labour of defending the institutions of 
England, and of slaying all the enemies of altars and of thrones 
and of all the most venerable abuses in church and state. 

In this vocation of champion of monarchy and of aristocracy, 
he has attacked the republicans of the seventeenth century in 
the first volume of his work. For all are republicans who are 
reformers of abuses ; and though Penn, Sunderland, Hume, 
and Algernon Sidney might not favour the overthrow of kings, 
they nevertheless were men who would have reduced the expen- 
sive bauble of monarchy ; would no longer have preserved pal- 
aces for bishops, nor universities for monastic styes of gluttony 
and sloth. They were in favour of governments founded on 
the good of the whole of the people existing in the country, 
and not on the pleasure of the few who have the privilege 
of dining amongst the paintings and statutes of Lansdowne 
House. This shows us why all the rancour of party spirit is 
displayed in the malignant account of the afl!air of Magdalen 
College ; for the reform of the University of Oxford, would have 
been the immediate consequence of the proposals of William 
Penn ; and that a Quaker should have been seen in the Univer- 
sity of Oxford, and discussing freely its uses, its abuses, and 
its reformation, is gall and wormwood to Macaulay, as it seems 



32 

to have been humiliating and enraging to that pompous digni- 
tary, Dr. Hough. Oxford is a place for lords alone. 

All republicanism is the object of the attack of Mr. Macau- 
lay, — and it is his business to represent republicans as robbers, 
murderers, sycophants, jesuists, atheists, simonists, and fraudu- 
lent debtors to the only one true church. There is no other 
mode of terrifying the middle classes of England into a continu- 
ation of the junction with the aristocracy against the mass of 
the people ; and this is the purpose which the writer of this 
History of England has now immediately in view. 

On the other hand, all is sunshine and happiness in his pic- 
tures of the interior of the courts. The mistresses of Charles 
and of James are described in full length pictures of the warm- 
est colouring. A constellation of these beauties is assembled 
at the court of Charles ; we have all the details of the persons, 
dress, lineage, and connexions of these females — the Italian 
greyhound, the spinnet, the silver ornaments in boundless profu- 
sion, are seen in the magnificent apartments of the Dutchess of 
Portsmouth ; Catharine Sedley is described with still greater 
minuteness and delicacy of colouring ; Sir Charles, the 
father of this celebrated demirep, is produced in all the pro- 
priety of the window in Covent Garden, and many other 
persons and scenes here move in a royal panorama which is 
usually supposed to be in place in the pages of some Decame- 
ronian novel alone. Is not this the temple of history — the 
august temple of the wise, the great, and the good, embalmed 
from ages gone by ? and are not these women as so many 
painted prostitutes ? what do they here ? They fill up plea- 
santly the intervals between the slanders of the characters of 
the liberal actors in the historical scene. 

For William Penn suffers death in his reputation with all the 
great and the good public characters of the reigns of Charles 
and of James. What Mr. Macaulay calls the " character of 
Sunderland," and the " fall of Sunderland," are so many elab- 
orate falsehoods, which are seen through in the words " he had 
a speculative liking for republican institutions." 

Thus it certainly was, for Sunderland was enlightened be- 
yond any statesman of his time ; at the University of Oxford 



33 

he had been the intimate friend of William Penn ; they had 
engaged in a similar course of classical learning — they had de- 
spised and opposed the superstitious ceremonies of the Univer- 
sity, and Sunderland was expelled for assisting in the same oppo- 
sition to the surplice which caused the expulsion of William Penn. 

And Algernon Sidney is a " pensioner of France." 

Not a person in all broad England, better knows than does 
Mr. Macaulay, that this charge is false ; that it has been refuted 
a thousand times. A republican was Algernon Sidney, and famous 
through all ages will be the history of his life and of his glori- 
ous death in the cause of the republican liberties of mankind. 

Here follows Sir Patrick Hume. " The chief of this party 
was a lowland gentleman, who had been implicated in the 
Whig plot, and had with difficulty eluded the vengeance of the 
court: Sir Patrick Hume of Polwath, in Berwickshire: — he 
was a man incapable alike of leading and of following ; con- 
ceited, captious, and wrong-headed; an endless talker; a slug- 
gard in action against the enemy, and active only against his 
own allies." 

Sir Patrick Hume was a man whose superior abilities are 
seen in every page of the Narrative which he has left of the 
events of the expedition of the Duke of Monmouth. The failure 
of the expedition he foresaw, by reason of the incapacity of 
the generals ; in England, of Monmouth ; and in Scotland, of 
Argyle. In the subsequent expedition of the Prince of Orange 
he was actively employed ; and after the revolution he reco- 
vered his estate of Polwath from the Duke of Gordon, was 
created Earl of Marchmont by William the 3rd ; was afterwards 
Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, and died with the name 
of a man, than whom Scotland has produced few who have 
fought, suffered, or triumphed, more nobly in the cause of the 
free Presbyterian faith and of the civil liberties of his native 
land. 

Here may be noticed the assertion of Macaulay, that Sir Pat- 
rick Hume '' had been implicated in the Whig plot." This is 
the Rye House Plot, the same on account of which so many 
judicial murders were committed in the reigns of Charles and 
of James ; and which was not a plot against the government, 
5 



31 

but a plot by the government against all the lives of all the 
most enlightened and honourable political characters of the time. 
To reiterate the charge of plotting against the government in 
the manner of assassination, is only another mode of throwing 
odium on all liberal and republican minded men ; for certain it 
is, that the crime of murder would never have been engaged in 
by such men as a Russel, Sidney, or a Hume ; they openly opposed 
the measures of the government at the elections and on all other 
legal occasions ; but on the charge of murder, it is certain that 
the lives and fortunes of these great patriots were most unjustly 
and infamously sworn away by the emissaries of the court. It 
is of historical importance that William Penn should be seen 
subsequently moving so frequently in sympathy and in active 
assistance to the parties accused of this plot — for he lived at 
the time, and was the friend of many of the parties, and his judg- 
ment could not have been deceived ; and yet he is seen sympa- 
thizing with the fate of Cornish and of Gaunt, and hazarding 
the malice of the Duke of Gordon, in behalf of Sir Patrick 
Hume. Certain we therefore are, that there was no truth in the 
Rye House Plot, for the projectors of murder would never have 
been thus countenanced by a man of the character of William 
Penn. 

But now we shall see what description of politician obtains 
the admiration of Mr. Macaulay. 

" A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher, of 
Salton, a man distinguished by learning and eloquence; dis- 
tinguished also by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit, 
but of an irritable and impracticable temper. He was the head 
of an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his descent. 
He was a fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his 
intellectual superiority. Like many of his most illustrious con- 
temporaries — Milton, for example — Harrington — Marvel, and 
Sidney — Fletcher had, from the misgovernment of several suc- 
cessive princes, conceived a strong aversion to monarchy ; yet 
he was no democrat. Both in his character of gentleman, and 
in his character of scholar, he looked down with disdain upon 
the common people ; and even so little disposed to entrust them 
with political power, that he thought them unfit even to enjoy 



35 

personal freedom. It is a curious circumstance, that this man, 
the most honest, fearless, and uncompromising republican of 
his time, should have been the author of a plan for reducing 
a large part of the working classes of Scotland to slavery." 

Undoubtedly to employ his classical learning for the purpose 
of reducing his countrymen to slavery, was good in the eyes of 
Mr. Macaulay, as a parvenu of the Whig aristocracy, than 
whom never men have abused their power for more selfish pur- 
poses, have practised so much hypocrisy towards the people of 
England, or acted upon the worst principles of Nicholas Macchi- 
avelli, in the base art of dividing and of governing the multi- 
tudes of their fellow men. Through seventeen years of power 
obtained on the pretence of liberalism, have these men been 
steadily engaged in the business of their own enrichment and 
further elevation in the ranks of the aristocracy, every political 
abuse has been continued and encreased — the corn laws — the 
master evil of manufacturing England — were continued until 
famine forced open the ports, the reform of the Parliament was 
converted into a nullity by the corruption of the manufacturing 
members, the naval and military expenditure has been raised 
to seventeen millions sterling per year, and the British islands 
present the appearance of one vast camp in a time of declining 
commerce, and where beggary stalks about the length and the 
breadth of the land. All this has been done by the arts which 
are brought from the worst remains of classical antiquity, and 
for which such characters as Fletcher of Salton are admired by 
Macaulay, a man who has grown grey in the harness of the 
English nobility of the party which has for its oracle the 
pages of the Edinburgh Review. 

But the literary merits of Fletcher are magnified to a folly, in 
this account of his productions; he is the author of no one 
great literary work, nor of any one important concatenation of 
any description, and when compared with the Discourses on 
Government by Algernon Sidney, or the second part of the No 
Cross No Crown, by William Penn, all the writings of Fletcher 
of Salton are no more than as Ossa to a wart. And the disgusting 
temper of Fletcher of Salton, ruined him as a private gentleman ; 
he fled for the manslaughter of a brother officer and served 



36 

against the Turks for many years, because unable to appear in 
his own country with the consequence of the crime suspended 
over his head, and he died in obscurity at last, and despised by 
all the world. 

Mr. Macaulay might well take a lesson from the history of 
this man ; he displays an admiration for the character of Fletcher 
of Salton which shows us the cause of his own downfall in 
the political world. Elected a member of Parliament for Edin- 
burgh, Mr. Macaulay found himself in the office of paymaster 
of the forces, with a large salary, a seat in the cabinet, and the 
Right Honourable Thomas Babington Macaulay, becoming then 
his high sounding name. But in an evil hour " he looked 
down with disdain upon the common people," the unendurable 
pomposity, arrogance, and insolence of his demeanour amongst 
his constituents in Scotland, caused the people to say. Is not 
this the son of Zachary Macaulay ? and thereupon and from 
that cause alone was the brilliant reviewer turned out of the 
representation of Edinburgh, and Mr. Cowen, the paper-maker, 
elevated into his seat. This occurred within two years from 
this time, and is the cause of the writing of a History of Eng- 
land, in which he returns to the unhappy error of indulging in 
this qualification of disdain and self destructive self conceit. 

He overrates his power to sustain thrones and drive back the 
waves of democracy. The institutions of England must be 
reviewed on the popular principle, and before any long time 
shall have passed away; for England has not been revolution- 
ized by sympathy with the progress of republican movement only 
because of the circumstance that every second man in England 
is not yet " only just not dying of hunger ;" which in the words 
of Chevalier, has been the cause of the late revolution in France. 
But still in Great Britain misery infinite walks about through 
the land ; every tenth person receives parish relief, and this 
numbers three millions of souls to whom existence is a curse 
in the workhouses of modern England — other four or five mil- 
lions are only just above this condition and in eternal dread of 
its approach — other millions are descending lower and lower 
towards the regions of poverty; and it is estimated that full ten 
millions of persons in the British islands are without property 



37 

of any kindand dependent on the chances of the day for bread 
and for remaining in the world. " Oppression," says William 
Penn, in his Maxims, " makes a poor country, and a discon- 
tented people, who are always waiting for a change." 

Instead, then, of persevering in the present system of fraudu- 
lent writing and of military force and violence in the support 
of a monstrous pile of ancient abuse, let it be hoped that a 
contrary policy will prevail in England, and that justice may be 
substituted for the sword, which may not always be successful 
against multitudes of men and against the course of events. 
The true policy to be pursued, let Mr. Macaulay and his patrons 
then learn from the example of William Penn. " I give you 
no soldiers, William, for your colony." " I want none of thy 
soldiers, Charles ; I depend upon something better than any 
soldiers of thine." 

To do justice to all, is the policy to be found in the example 
of W^illiam Penn. If he ventured amongst the Indians of Ame- 
rica without soldiers and without swords, let Englishmen now 
venture to trust one another with the votes which are the natu- 
ral right of all existing in a free State. 

Let the government of England then disband the standing 
army of England — save the enormous sum of seventeen millions 
sterling now expended on the military system of the country; 
and by yielding the elective franchise, which is the right of all 
the people, satisfy the discontented and convert the hatred into 
the gratitude, of millions of their fellow men. Then the throne, 
the lords, the church, and the universities would be saved for 
a long period of time, though reduced probably from the pre- 
sent overgrown plethoric condition of institutions which are 
overloaded with the abuses of ages gone by. 

And let us hope that Macaulay will not persevere in his hith- 
erto strain of abuse of the best friends of mankind in former 
ages; for in his forthcoming volumes the judgment of the 
public w^ill be more easily formed as the history comes down 
to the times of the establishment of the republics of the United 
States and of France. To these times it is to be perceived that 
the historian is hurrying, as the more important ground for the 
contest with the dreaded republican principle ; and it is to be 



38 

expected that the same misrepresentations and calumnies will 
be directed against the noblest of the modern republicans — a 
Carnot in France, and a Jefferson in the United States. But 
prejudice and imposture will be the more easily detected as 
the events approach our own time. 

Truth is the cardinal virtue of the historian ; without truth, the 
almanac is superior to the most flowery historical composition. 
Truth is the beginning, the middle, and the end; — the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Yet is there not 
one word of truth in all the allusions which this History 
of England has made to the name and the fame of William 
Penn, and of his fellow-labourers in the cause of the liberties 
of England in the times of the darkest hours of danger and 
distress. 

For we have seen clearly that William Penn did not 
attend at the executions of Cornish or of Elizabeth Gaunt wnth 
the slavish prejudices and for the ignoble purposes which this 
writer has represented; but for purposes and with sentiments of 
the most nobly opposite description — he did not extort money 
from females in distress, but he prevented its extortion and put 
down the cruelty and criminality of the ladies of the court; he 
was not a Jesuit in his principles and practice in the affair of 
Magdalen College, for he opposed the king and the Jesuits in 
the noblest manner which has been seen at any court in modern 
times ; neither was he guilty of simony nor of fraud upon the 
Church of England, nor of any of the other criminalities and 
follies which this History of England has brought against his 
hitherto unostentatiously great name. 

It is a " book of grossest infamy," in the words of Milton, 
on the buffoon who ridiculed Socrates on the Athenian stage. 
The general purpose for which it has been produced at this 
time of struggle for the liberties of nations, renders the work 
very despicable in the eyes of those who wish well to the pro- 
gress of freedom in foreign nations ; and all future honourable 
citizenship is discouraged in the success which a dazzling style 
of composition has been supposed to have secured for the so- 
phist who has brought forward these calumnious insults to the 
memory of a William Penn. 




WILLIAM PENN, 



FROM THE 



CHARGES CONTAINED IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



Et. Hon. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 1 



&s 



BY HENRY FAIRBAIRN. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

PRINTED BY JOSEPH RAKESTRAW, APPLE-TREE ALLEY, 

FIRST DOOR ABOVE FOURTH ST. 

1849. 




LIBRARY OF 



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